PremiAir Racing has spent day one of The Bend 500 laying a foundation with its four drivers and crew ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying and Sunday’s 500km race around The Bend Motorsport Park.
The day was highlighted by Richie Stanaway running as high as P2 in the final practice session of the day, as he tested out his qualifying set-up.
While the final results across each of the sessions don’t look spectacular save for a top ten result in the final run of the day, the team is not concerned, with the focus on today’s outings more about race runs and getting co-drivers David Russell (driving with Jimmy Golding in the #31 PremiAir Racing Camaro) and Nash Morris (driving with Stanaway in the #62 PremiAir Racing entry) comfortable than lap times.
In P1, all four drivers took the wheel, with final results of P19 (#31) and P23 (#62). In P2, it was all about the co-drivers, with P24 for Morris in the #62 and P26 for Russell in #31.
In the final session of the day, although an all-drivers outing, Stanaway and Golding took the reins for the entirety, logging the 9th (#62) and 24th (#31) quickest times.
The team now turns its attention to the reams of data collected today as they look to maximise their package ahead of qualifying tomorrow.
Saturday at The Bend Motorsport Park will kick-off with the co-drivers P4 at 10.20am, followed by a final all-drivers P5 at 12.30pm. Qualifying will then be held at 3.35pm, ahead of the Top Ten Shootout at 5.20pm. Sunday’s 500km race at 2.15pm will be preceded by a Warm-Up at 10.00am. For full event information and schedules, go to www.supercars.com
QUOTEBOARD: THE BEND 500, FRIDAY 12 SEPTEMBER 2025
Ludo Lacroix – Competition Director, PremiAir Racing
“We started probably not with the best set of tyres, definitely not on #62, and still not probably very good on #31. So, both drivers struggled a little bit today in practice one. In practice two we decided to use the second set of tyre carry-over, so nothing new, which was better for the co-drivers. There is still a lot to learn for Nash – he is doing a good job through the corners and he needs to gain confidence going into the braking, that will come with a better rear at the end of the braking, he is still a little unsure if he is going to be with him or out He was careful for the fastest sections, we saw a couple of co-drivers in his session come off, so obviously his a bit more matured in that respect and says I will bring the speed later on. He did a good job. Then the last session was a bit of a quali session, it was the first time we set a green set of tyres, all of us. #31 was probably a little bit unlucky, he would have had a better lap but made a small mistake at one of the corners that cost a bit. He improved for the second lap but not enough unfortunately for his liking. #62 with Richie was clearly good and happier. We have changed a car a fair bit today, we obviously talk a lot with Triple Eight, but we changed the car in a way we wanted to change; we were planning to go down that path but it was good to see that Triple Eight was the same sort of thinking. We ended up very close again to where they are, they just did their lap really late in the session and we did ours a little earlier, and because we didn’t have the best P1 and P2 it takes a bit more time to just execute one good lapper. But Richie was happy, he did a good lap I thought at the time and it puts him around the top ten, I think we have got to work on that, and bring Jimmy into the party with us, and hopefully we can have two cars in the top ten, that would be fantastic. The positive thing is the two Red Bull cars which are in our family somewhere are strong, so we know that when they are strong we can be stronger. So, we have to understand what they did well and go with them and carry on trying to better for the weekend and position ourselves as best as possible for the race. And tomorrow we need to make sure our co-drivers do laps, do laps, do laps, because they need to be on the pace.”
Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“We worked through a few things on the car today, had to tweak it a bit from where we rolled out – we weren’t too comfortable with the car there, but improved it a lot. In the last runs I did on a fresher tyre we didn’t maximise, so we will tune up a bit of driver and a bit of car to what we need to get the time out of it tomorrow. D-Russ did a good job of getting comfortable, he probably didn’t get the best pick of the tyres so he probably looked a bit worse off on the time sheets than what he actually was. We improved the car over the day and felt a lot more comfortable this afternoon. The running of the last session for me didn’t quite go to plan so a little bit off-sync which sort of threw us out a little bit but we are confident we are heading in the right direction with the car and there are still a few things we will try tomorrow before we get to qualifying.”
David Russell – co-driver, #31 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“From both Jimmy’s P1 and then P2 with my session, I think we’ve got a bit of work to do. We sort of chose in my session to stay on the same tyre as Jimmy was on in his practice session. For me, we look pretty average at the moment to be honest, because we weren’t running a better tyre, where a lot of them actually went into their race allocation. So, although the scoreboard doesn’t look that great, I think we will start to recover and put that work in when we get onto a better tyre, and I think the car is going to be a lot better. But we ticked a lot of boxes in terms of practicing fuel saving, getting a feel for the car and what brake bias shifts you have to make in terms of the race. So, I have got experience now of what the tyre is going to be like when it is probably at its worst. I am looking forward to being on some better rubber with some more grip in the next session.”
Richie Stanaway – #62 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“It was a solid day for us; we focused a lot on race stuff earlier in the day. We put a bit of effort into the quali performance for the last session and popped up into a reasonable position. So, everything went to plan and we are feeling pretty solid. We will see now what we can learn overnight and try and improve for tomorrow.”
Nash Morris – co-driver, #62 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“It was definitely pretty cool to hit the track in a V8 Supercar session for my first ever time. It was a kind of pinch myself moment when I saw Jamie Whincup driving out there on the same track as I was, so that was pretty cool. I did a race run which I was pretty happy with. There is a little bit to go on the car, but we will tune it up and see how we go tomorrow. I think a couple of the co-drivers put on a good tyre at the end there, but that is not our job here at PremiAir, we are here to have good race pace and that is what we are aiming to do. There will be another session for myself tomorrow which will be good, we will do another race run there and see how we go, hopefully learn a bit more.”
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